Bill Blanchard

Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
-William Faulkner

The truth today is that people who could buy or sell are scared because of the uncertainty in the housing market.

‘Will I pay too much; will I sell for too little?' The voices in your head can rattle forever until you see the facts.

The facts are that in Seattle, housing prices in some areas actually climbed.

This points to prices stabilizing and new facts; we can see the bottom of the Seattle market. Most analysis see the bottom accruing second quarter of 2009. Then a rebound in mid 2010 because of a shortage of new construction brought on by the current financial crisis.

There will always be uncertainty, but some people have confused the facts. A house is an investment... but more importantly it is the place we live, love and spend time with the things and people that matter to us. That's the truth.

What does this mean? The Case Shiller 10-city index looks at home prices by tracking home values not home sales to come up with their index. Some consider it a more accurate measurement of the housing market. The ten cities that make up the 25% loss are some of the most depressed in the country. That's why the bad headline.The Seattle market is down a modest 10.2 percent for the year. Overall, this puts prices back to March of 2004.

I see this index bottoming out mid 2009 which would put prices down another 1-2% before prices level out and later start to rebound.

I've just seen the future and it is Neoreaders. Basically it is a bar code Real Estate Agents can use in many ways. I call it The Bill-Board

When a smart phone is equipped with a Neoreader you take a picture of the reader (called a Q2 or Data Matrix code):

And you are directed to a web site. This will take you to my site.

Getting a reader is simple and it will direct the smart phones to any web site you choose.

http://www.neoreader.com/code.html

As agents we place one of these readers by our listing. Buyers shoot the reader and zap, the web site for the property is now on their phone.

Here it is on my listing in Redmond.

Some phones have readers' standard now and it's easy to download. Japan has been using it for years. I heard kids have t-shirts printed with a Neoreader that links it to their ‘Myspace.'

In the future, newspaper ads would have Neoreaders so readers would zap the paper to learn everything about the listing. Perhaps newspaper ads would become extremely valuable once again.

This is the future and I'd like to thank Brad Golik at John L Scott in Bellevue WA for telling me about this.

REDFIN RELEASE:

"A Very Tough Day Today Redfin laid off roughly 20% of our employees."

Real Estate Services is not a commodity. It's not like buying stock, booking a flight, buying a book or scheduling a vacation.

It's a personal service. Redfin was created by people who thought they could create a very profitable corporate offering (IPO) using real estate as their vehicle. They used people's hope and greed to generate motivation for employees, investors and customers.

The percentage of people who buy and sell homes without the help of a professional real estate agent has changed very little over the years. (The National Association of Realtors says that independent sellers accounted for 12 percent of all homes sold in 2007, down from 18 percent in 1997.) Some people dispute this number and say it is 20% but the point is Redfin's hope was that they would capture the segment of the market that wanted to save money by doing the work themselves. Redfin planned to benefit from this perceived growth. That perception never turned to reality as the overall market shrank and customers realized the benefit of using a professional agent.

If the internet and commodity trading of real estate where going to replace real estate agents it would have by now. The thinking was because it happened to Travel Agents it will happen to Real Estate Agents.

Travel agents where replaced for the most part because sellers (Airlines, Cruise Lines, Hotels, etc.) squeezed the agents out as the internet made the complicated process of booking and payments rather simple for the buyer. Buyers were motivated to find the best price. Back in the 80s my cousin created the first computer program so travel agents and airlines could talk to each other (Crosstalk.) It made everyone millions until communication became generic and accessible to everyone. Now prices are so tight airlines struggle to survive. Speculators thought real estate would follow the same path.

Buying and selling the space where you live, raise your children, entertain your family and friends, live and die in, is not the same as booking a flight to New York to fit your schedule. There are finances, families, emotions and dreams involved. What was Refin thinking?

Redfin's IPO will never happen. The employees and investors who thought the stock would make them rich now need to rethink their dreams. Redfin is now last pop of the Real Estate bubble.

The End of Google, Yahoo and MSN?

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." George Hegel

It's 1978, Communications 101 at the University of Washington. The history of communication is all of one chapter in a very large text book. It begins with the first printing press, ends with network Television. The next big technology wave was the coax cable. I can still see my professor pacing the classroom with a two foot section of the flexible black rod, pointing it at us, bellowing "This is the future!" He looked like a nun about to rap our knuckles. But 30 years ago, it was the future, and he wanted to make a point: Think Outside the Box.

The Big Four. You think I'm talking about Google, Yahoo, MSN and what's its name. No, I'm going back in history to the beginning of the technological revolution to the four dominant radio networks. Here is where this history lesson starts.

The history of Radio is complicated but at one time there was NBC, ABC, CBS and the Mutual Broadcasting networks. They were huge in both audiences and cash flow. The Big Four fought it out over the airwaves, in court, and, of course, in advertising, until television took over in the 50's. However, the change to that new Box took decades.

In 1926, Philo T Farnsworth invented television in his small apartment, all the while, his wife complaining about the smell generated by the tubes. She may have been the first one to say "Television Stinks." His grandson is a friend of mine so I like to give Philo some credit. The first 60 line image transmitted was a dollar sign, not Philo's wife.

This is not his wife. I inserted this picture to keep your interest. TV debuted in the United States at the 1939 New York World's Fair. It wasn't until after WW II that the economics of television made sense.

As we race through history, The Big Four Radio Networks became the Big Three in television. Even though the Mutual radio network created some of the most formidable radio shows that later became TV shows, it never became a TV network. As the radio networks fizzled, dozens of smaller radio networks and independents were created. The Box was changing.

In the mid 50s, Network TV was sizzling as radio cooled. The Big Three TV Networks had a "License to Print Money." (A quote from a friend's dad who ran a large corporation while his wife's family owned several TV stations.) It was true. The three networks were the only game in town until the mid 80's.

Network TV changed at the 1986 National Association of Broadcasters convention in San Francisco. I was there, promoting a Gardening show (I'm always a little ahead of my time.) Several blocks down the street, and way off the convention floor, at the elegant Saint Francis hotel was a party launching a new television network: FOX.

The party was packed and the programming was questionable. Everything and everybody was negative about this new start up. FOX promoted the Joan Rivers show. They had the Tracey Ullman show which had a short animated sketch called The Simpson's. Married with Children, and A Current Affair seemed odd against the Big Three favorites such as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Dallas and Cheers. But, of course, these and other FOX shows would change communications history; change the Box.

At the party, most of the FOX executives used some kind of gel to slick their hair back and I remember thinking they all looked like car salesmen. But the food and drinks were good and I walked away confident my show had a much better chance than this new network. Twenty years later this start up network became a power house. In the 2007-08 season, Fox became the most popular network in America.

But, back to my point, the big change came in the 80's as more and more targeted networks challenged convention, challenged the Box. Slowly, CNN, MTV, ESPN, Nickelodeon, HGTV, etc. captured more and more of the Big Three's audience.

Remember history. There was a time when there were no cable networks. I still see that coax cable pointed in my direction. So, history repeats itself. Radio became TV and now TV becomes the Internet. All had dominate players that shrank, as the economics and media transformed, into other entities.

Google, Yahoo and MSN are called the Big Three search engines today but really they are the Big Three networks (portals.) As ABC, NBC and CBS were in the 50's to the 80's, Google, MSN, and Yahoo are the networks of today. It seems obvious when you see these Big Three in a historical perspective, they will go the way of the radio and TV networks.

Today it seems these Big Three struggle to find themselves. I feel like Google is more interested in selling me something than getting me to the right web site. Tomorrow, established and new search engines will become more accepted and useful for view/users to access the internet, the new Box.

In the future, we will look back on the Big Three like we look back on the Big Three TV Networks and before that the Big Four Radio Networks. Perhaps it will take a perceptual or paradigm shift. Or just a new generation; a new wave.

The New History Book: When the new wave thinks rock and roll, they now go outside the Box to MTV.com to search... instead of Yahooing, Goggling, or just feeling lucky.